From hiding wallet cash flow to on-chain interaction anonymity: Vitalik presents "Ethereum Minimalist L1 Privacy Roadmap"

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin presented a proposal titled "Minimalist L1 Privacy Roadmap" this morning at the Ethereum Magicians technical community, outlining nine major strategies to enhance privacy protection for Ethereum users. This plan focuses on seamless integration with existing wallets and emphasizes lightweight design, aiming to make privacy a norm for Ethereum without altering the consensus mechanism.

Four major aspects: Defining the future privacy blueprint of Ethereum.

Vitalik's proposal focuses on enhancing the privacy protection of the Ethereum ecosystem, mainly covering four major aspects:

On-chain payment privacy: protecting the flow of funds from being tracked.

In-app activity anonymity: severing behavioral associations between different applications.

On-chain read confidentiality ( such as RPC calls ) prevent user on-chain interaction data from being collected.

Network layer anonymization: Reducing the risk of user identity exposure on the internet.

These strategies focus not only on technical implementation but also on the shared benefits with the existing ecosystem, enhancing the overall user experience.

Specific implementation steps

Vitalik proposed a series of specific measures, and the following are the key steps in the roadmap:

Start with the Wallet: Integrating privacy features into everyday use naturally.

He first suggested integrating privacy tools such as Railgun and Privacy Pools into mainstream Wallets, using the concept of "隱私餘額 (shielded balance)" to allow users to pre-set the privacy option when transferring, without the need for additional settings or downloading new applications.

By the way, the Solana network infrastructure Helius just launched the "Confidential Balances (Confidential Balances)" feature a few days ago, which is a token privacy mechanism that combines zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), allowing for enhanced user privacy while also maintaining efficient transaction processing capabilities.

(Solana introduces the "Confidential Balance" feature, using zero-knowledge proofs to establish a new standard for on-chain privacy)

One application, one address: breaking the activity links between applications.

He advocates for a future default model of "one address per application", sacrificing some convenience for high anonymity, and ultimately promoting self-transfer (send-to-self) to automatically enable privacy protection features, enhancing the confidentiality of user transactions.

Technical Upgrade: FOCIL, EIP-7701 and RPC Protection Progressing Together

At the same time, by implementing anti-censorship mechanisms (FOCIL) and the account abstraction proposal (EIP-7701), the deployment of privacy protocols can be simplified. In the short term, an RPC protection mechanism based on Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) can be adopted, while in the future, it is expected to be replaced by Private Information Retrieval (PIR) technology, providing stronger data protection.

(ETH Taipei | Vitalik envisions the ultimate vision for Ethereum L2 scaling: efficiency, security, and interoperability )

Multi-node, multi-layer protection: Strengthening data leak prevention design

Vitalik also suggested that wallets should be designed to connect multiple RPC nodes by default, with obfuscated network (mixnet) technology, and use independent node connections for different applications to avoid exposure caused by data centralization.

Reduce costs and improve efficiency: Introduce proof aggregation technology

To reduce the Gas cost of using privacy protocols, he proposed the "proof aggregation (proof aggregation protocols)" method, allowing multiple privacy protocol transactions to share a single on-chain proof, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing the burden on users.

(What is Gas limit? Vitalik predicts that Ethereum will significantly increase Gas limit in 2026, aiming not to sacrifice decentralization)

Private Key Vault: An Upgrade of Account Verification Logic for Transactions

Additionally, he emphasized the creation of "privacy-preserving keystore wallets (" that can be synchronously updated in L1 and L2, allowing for automatic synchronization of account upgrades and privacy records without the need to disclose the connectivity of on-chain data.

Vitalik's Vision for the Future: Making Privacy the Default State for Ethereum

Finally, Vitalik hopes that the future of Ethereum can achieve the following vision:

Most transactions come with privacy.

Activities between applications are isolated.

Can resist multiple threats including block observers and RPC nodes.

This blueprint not only represents technological innovation but also embodies a commitment to decentralization and user sovereignty.

User-Centric Approach: The Community Actively Promotes Ethereum Privacy Innovations

Vitalik's proposal has sparked lively discussions within the community. He shared this Roadmap on the X platform, emphasizing its lightweight features and integration with the existing ecosystem.

My own current privacy roadmap )much lighter on L1 changes, but also more limited in its consequences(:

Highly encourage people to read both!

— vitalik.eth )@VitalikButerin( April 11, 2025

At the same time, community member @pcaversaccio also released a roadmap a few days ago titled "Ethereum Privacy: The Road to Self-Sovereignty )Ethereum Privacy: The Road to Self-Sovereignty(," which explores similar privacy-enhancing paths and received retweets and recognition from Vitalik.

Both proposals emphasize user-centered privacy design, demonstrating the high consensus within the Ethereum community on privacy issues.

Ethereum privacy evolution officially launched

Vitalik's "Minimalist L1 Privacy Roadmap" is an important starting point for the Ethereum privacy revolution. By integrating with existing wallets and ecosystems, it achieves privacy protection for payments, application activities, on-chain reading, and network layers, gradually leading Ethereum towards a new standard of "privacy by default."

With the active promotion of community members, the future of Ethereum's privacy is gradually taking shape.

This article discusses the hidden flow of funds in wallets to anonymous interactions on the blockchain: Vitalik published the "Ethereum Minimalist L1 Privacy Roadmap" which first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.